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Owner of PageF30.com.
Translator of Demian by Hermann Hesse into English - an interlinear translation for German students and those who want to see the original text.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/mithradates
Fluent in Japanese, Korean. Proficient in Mandarin, Turkish, German, French, Portuguese, others.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

The definition of "benefit" here is "that which makes more people look up in the sky and think about space than they otherwise would". And what made a lot of people look up into the sky after the launch? A spiraling booster from the Falcon 9 rocket that came down over Australia, looking like a UFO (okay, it was a UFO by definition at the time since it was unidentified) and causing quite a stir.

Here's what it looked like (warning: music in the second one):

Not too bad at all.

Bob McDonald from CBC also has a blog entry here on the flight, complete with a cost comparison between the Falcon 9 and the Shuttle. A Falcon 9 (which will eventually be permitted to launch humans as well) will be able to take people to the ISS for about $50 million, a full 20 times cheaper. Also not too bad at all.